Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi. I'm new and I'm looking for some opinions and advice from some other people like myself.
I'm 22 years old and I've been completely reliant on everyone my entire life. I cannot step outside the house alone, make phone calls to people I don't know and pretty much any social situation, involves me getting close to having a breakdown.
In the last few weeks, I have started having intensive therapy to help me with my anxiety that has ruled my life.
For as long as I can remember (I was diagnosed at 12 and have been under therapy for years), I have been taught safety behaviours. Things such as, planning before a situation, rehearsing what to do or say, having someone with me for support and now, I've been told that these aren't good for me. I've been told to push through the anxiety and deal with it without my safety behaviours, because apparently, this will reduce my anxiety overall, naturally.
When I was 12, it was confirmed by a highly thought of psychiatrist that having Asperger's, lead to the fight or flight section of my brain, to basically overwork itself, causing me to feel fear at even the smallest of things.
The thought of pushing myself through anxiety, scares the hell out of me. I'm terrified from the moment I wake up, so making myself do things in order to face the anxiety and deal with it, makes me physically shake.
Is my therapist right? Should I force myself through the anxiety, or will it make me worse?
Is your therapist experienced at treating autistic people?
My understanding is if the things that are causing you anxiety are due to underlying autism issues, just trying to 'push through' the anxiety may not help because a large part of your anxiety may be because those things are genuinely difficult for you to do. If anxiety is less 'rational', a CBT approach of 'push through and do the thing, see it's not so bad, feel less anxious the next time' can be helpful for a lot of people, but if it's something you actually genuinely struggle with, that might be a much less effective approach. E.g. I recently spoke to someone who said before they got diagnosed, they got pushed to keep doing social stuff (under the understanding it was 'just social anxiety') in a bid to push through it, and they found it ended up making their anxiety much worse, because the underlying reason was that they had trouble understanding other people and social situations were therefore very difficult for them, and that didn't change with exposure.
The things you talk about being 'safety behaviours' are very much coping skills from the difficulties that come with being autistic. They're things I know i do in order to navigate things like social situations and other things to generally get by in life (and with them, I would say my anxiety issues day to day are minimal); I know without them, everything would just be even more confusing. I would have more difficulty communicating with people without my scripts, I would cope less with change, because I rely on being able to plan contingencies that let me know 'if this goes wrong it's okay because I've got x, y and z as options', they're about functioning as much as not being anxious-so being able to function less and struggling more would definitely make me more anxious, not less!
Boating taxonomist has said what I was trying to say but couldn't find quite the right words for. I totally agree! For me the push through it CBT approach has only ever worked for less rational fears, not genuine autistic difficulties. Based on some bad CBT experiences I've had on reflection I think I'd run a mile from a therapist that said what yours has to be honest.